http://www.sspx.org/against_the_sound_bites/defense_of_the_inquisition.htm

"When the tribunal of the Inquisition arrived in a city, it proclaimed a
time of grace of about a month, in the course of which the heretics could
of their own volition confess their errors with the certitude of undergoing
only light and secret spiritual penances. After this delay, the inquisitors
would publish the edict of the faith which ordered all Christians, under
penalty of excommunication, to denounce the heretics and those who
protected them. The Inquisition did not have at its command a secret police
or a network of spies. It counted upon the collaboration of the Catholic
people, acting in this way more as a guardian of the social consensus than
as an oppressive apparatus of the State.

The Catholic Inquisition did not resemble the totalitarian inquisitions of
the 20th century. It did not intend to find traitors at any price
("counter-revolutionaries" or "collaborators"). It only aimed at the public
propagators of the heresy, and above all at the leading men. The
Inquisition was not concerned with the conscience of the heretics, but only
with their exterior action.

The pope confided the Medieval Inquisition to the Dominicans and the
Franciscans. These two newly founded orders gave serious guarantees of
probity and sanctity. The theological and canonical knowledge of the
inquisitors was remarkable. In fact, the Inquisition was entrusted to the
finest flowers of the clergy of the era. Unlike the revolutionary tribunals
of 1793, the tribunals of the Inquisition were never presided over by
corrupted and debauched fanatics.

The Inquisitor did not render his judgment alone. He was assisted by some
assessors (assistant judges), selected from the local clergy. The
Inquisition was, in a way, the beginning of the institution of the jury
system. In addition, the bishop audited the sentences and the accused could
appeal to the pope. Thus the inquisitorial procedure was suitable, even by
the standards of our modern criteria of justice. Contrary to what we have
been told, the Inquisition frequently acquitted. Bernard Gui exercised the
functions of Inquisitor at Toulouse with severity from 1308 to 1323. He
pronounced 930 judgments, of which 139 were acquittals.

The accused could defend himself and even had recourse to a lawyer, however
he could not always listen to the testimony of his accusers. Historians
have severely condemned this secretive nature of the inquisitorial
procedure. But one must put things in their proper context. The heretics
that the Inquisition was pursuing were rich and powerful. They often had
armed men at their command. Not rarely, witnesses for the prosecution and
even inquisitors had been assassinated. To testify against the leaders of
the Cathari or the Marranos could be as dangerous as testifying today
against the maffia bosses. In 1485, the Spanish Grand Inquisitor, Peter
Arbues, was stabbed at the holy altar by thugs in the employ of the
Marranos. That is why the Inquisition protected the anonymity of certain
witnesses. It only had recourse to secret inquiry in cases of necessity.
But the accused benefitted likewise from certain guarantees. Thus, at the
beginning of the process, he could present a list of his personal enemies,
and, if the anonymous witness was found on this list, his testimony was
automatically rejected. In addition, the testimony of the secret accuser
was given in the presence of the accusedâ??s lawyer. At that time, the lawyer
was appointed by the tribunal, to make certain that he did not reveal the
identity of the witness; but he did not fulfill his task any less
conscientiously. Several Spanish jurists distinguished themselves by the
quality of their pleadings for the defense before the tribunals of the
Inquisition.

Note that the principle of anonymous denunciation is not, in itself, as
unjust a procedure as it can appear to be. Today, in the province of
Quebec, the "Law for the Protection of Children" allows anonymous
denunciations.

The other great objection that is made of the Inquisition is of its use of
torture during the interrogations. Once again, one must put things in their
proper context. The inquisitorial interrogation bore no resemblance to the
sadistic tortures of the Gestapo or the KGB. It was relatively mild in
comparison to the torments that the courts of common law were imposing on
criminals at that time. Three methods were employed:

   1.

      The Garrucha was a pulley which worked a rope tied to the wrists of
the accused. By it, he was raised to a certain height, and then brutally
released in one stroke or in a series of successive jolts, which inflicted
intense pain to the shoulders.
   2.

      The Potro was a bench fitted with spikes to which the accused was
attached by ropes. The torturer, by tightening the ropes, would gradually
drive the spikes into the flesh of the accused.
   3.

      The Toca was a funnel made of cloth which allowed water from a big
jar to flow into the stomach of the accused, to the point of suffocation. 

The inquisitorial procedure minutely regulated the practices of the
interrogation. For an accused to be submitted to the torture, he had to be
being prosecuted for a very grave crime, and the tribunal had to already
have serious presumptions of his guilt. The local bishop had to give his
agreement, which protected the accused from the abusive zeal of an
occasional disreputable inquisitor. The interrogation could not be
repeated. The instructions also stipulated the presence of a representative
of the bishop and a doctor during the torture session, the prohibition of
putting in danger of death and of mutilating, and the obligation of the
doctor to render medical care immediately afterwards. The sick, the aged
and pregnant women were exempted from interrogation under torture.
Furthermore, torture was rarely employed: in 1-2% of the processes
according to Jean Dumont, in 7-11% according to Bartolom?Š Bennassar.

It is surprising to learn that the majority of those accused withstood the
torture and were, in consequence, acquitted. If the objective of the
torturers was, as one might think, to obtain admissions of guilt at any
cost, one is forced to admit that they were going about it in the wrong
way. One must ask himself if the questioning under threat of torture was
not more of an ultimate means of defense offered to the accused, a kind of
judicial test comparable to the "ordeal" of the Middle Ages. That is, in my
opinion, an hypothesis which should be looked into.

The ordeal, or "judgment of God," was a judicial test of common usage up to
about the year 1000. The accused proved his statements before the tribunal
by the trial by fire, or of water or of the sword. In the first case, he
held in his hands a burning coal; if his wounds were healed within a
certain period of time, the tribunal concluded that his testimony had been
true. In the second case, the accused was tied up and thrown into a large
barrel of water; if he floated, which is the normal tendency because of the
air in the lungs, the tribunal concluded that he had lied, but if he sank,
at the risk of his life, it was because he had been telling the truth.
Lastly, the trial by the sword put in opposition two knights representing
two contradictory testimonies; victory indicated where the truth was to be
found. The Church had always fought against the "ordeal", which was a
superstitious procedure, inherited from the old Germanic pagan law.

The use of torture as a means of proof is shocking to the modern mentality,
but it was already an advancement in relation to the "ordeal." One must not
forget that questioning under torture was, at that time, employed much more
frequently in criminal proceedings. Additionally, the Grand Inquisitor, St.
John Capistran, forbade the usage of torture in inquisitorial proceedings
in the 15th century, more than 300 years before King Louis XVI did the same
for the criminal tribunals of France (although the Spanish Inquisition had
re-established the use of it in the interim).

However that may be, and in spite of the use of torture, the inquisitorial
procedure marks an advancement in the history of law. On the one hand, it
definitively discarded the ordeal as a means of proof, in replacing it by
the principle of testimonial proof, which still governs modern law to this
day. On the other hand, it established the principle of the State as
prosecutor. Up to that time, it was the victim who had to prove
culpability, even in a criminal proceeding, and this was often difficult
when the victim was weak and the criminal was powerful. But with the
Inquisition, the victim is no more than a simple witness, as in the
criminal proceedings of today. It was the ecclesiastical authority which
had the burden of proof.

The number of heretics burned by the Inquisition has been greatly
exaggerated. Juan Antonio Llorente is the originator of these imaginary
numbers, which too many studies still refer to on this subject.18 Llorente
was an apostate priest who put himself in the service of the Napoleonic
occupation of Spain. After having calumniated the Inquisition, he destroyed
the archives which would have been able to contradict him. Several
historians still put forth inflated numbers based on anticlerical
imagination.19 However, numbers of this order have been rejected since 1900
by Ernest Schafer and Alfonso Junco. Henceforth honest historians are in
agreement in saying that the number of victims of the Spanish Inquisition
was much less than is generally believed.20 Jean Dumont speaks of about 400
executions during the 24 years of the reign of Isabella the Catholic.
Thatâ??s few indeed in comparison to the 100,000 victims of the purge of
"collaborators" in France from 1944-45, or the tens of millions killed by
the Communists in Russia, China, and elsewhere.

Note also that those condemned to death were not always executed. Their
sentences were sometimes commuted to time in prison, and they were then
burned in effigy. Moreover, the condemned were not necessarily burned
alive. If they showed a certain repentance, they were suffocated before
being thrown on the pyre. Remember also that it was only the relapsed, that
is to say those who fell back into heresy after having abjured it, who were
condemned to death."
...

"At any rate, the death penalty constituted less than 1% of the sentences
pronounced by the Inquisition. Most of the time, the heretics were
condemned to wearing the cross on their clothes, to making pilgrimages, to
serving in the Holy Land or to undergoing a flagellation, often merely
symbolic. Sometimes the tribunal confiscated their goods or imprisoned
them. The inquisitorial prisons were not as terrible as has been claimed.
They must even have been more comfortable than the common prisons, since
some criminals admitted to heresy in order to be transferred to them. In
addition, the heretics often benefited from amnesties. In 1495, Queen
Isabella proclaimed a general pardon for all those whom the Inquisition had
condemned.

The true history of the Inquisition does not correspond at all with the
black legend spread by the enemies of the Church. Bartolom?Š Bennassar, who
is no apologist for the Holy Office, wrote in Lâ??Inquisition espagnole,
XVe-XIXe si?¨cle, (1979):

    "If the Spanish Inquisition had been a tribunal like the other
tribunals, I would not hesitate to conclude, without fear of contradiction
and despite preconceived ideas, that it was superior to them.... More
efficient, there is no doubt; but also more precise and more scrupulous, in
spite of the weaknesses of a certain number of judges who may have been
proud, greedy or lecherous. A justice which practices a very attentive
examination of the testimony, which carries out a meticulous cross-checking
of it, which accepts without hesitation the defendantâ??s challenges of
suspect witnesses (and often for the slightest reason), a justice which
rarely employs torture and which, unlike certain of the civil courts of
justice, and which, after a quarter of a century of atrocious severity,
hardly ever condemns to capital punishment and only very prudently
administers the terrible punishment of the galleys. A justice anxious to
educate, to explain to the accused why he was in error, which reprimands
and counsels, and whose ultimate condemnations only affect the relapsed.

    "...(But) the Inquisition cannot be considered as a tribunal similar to
the others. The Inquisition was not charged with protecting persons and
property from the various aggressions they might undergo. It was created to
prohibit a belief and a cult...." 21

Now we are at the heart of the matter. As an honest and competent
historian, Bennassar cannot but reject the calumnies which have circulated
for centuries on the subject of the Inquisition. But as a liberal and a
relativist, he cannot accept the principle which was at the base of this
institution â??which is the power of religious restraint."

Ukratko, moje tvrdnje o inkviziciji ni u kojem aspektu nisu sporne. One su
naprosto cinjenice. Problem s inkvizicijom jest koncept vjerske drzave,
teokracije, koja ogranicava spektar teoloskog promisljanja pucanstva.
Problem s inkvizicijom jest pretpostavka vjerskog jednoumlja, pretpostavka
da je "jedna prava", "spasonosna" vjera u najboljem interesu svih. To je
netocno. Praksa pokazuje da je bolje dopustiti razlicitim sustavima
koegzistenciju, pa neka se "u divljini" bore za prevlast. Ako neki sustav
nije u stanju izboriti prevlast snagom uvjeravanja i pozitivnom
motivacijom, onda je on slab i definitivno bi bilo stetno umjetno ga
pojacati instrumentarijem represije. Stovise, treba iznimno ograniciti i
koncept "genetske religije", te onemoguciti religije u suzbijanju apostata.
Svaki pokusaj "zamrzavanja stanja" i uspostave religijskog autoriteta koji
ce nadzirati ljude na razini drzave i represivnog aparata treba biti snazno
suzbijen. Uspostava vjerskog totalitarizma, odnosno teokracije, razlog je
stagnacije i propasti drzava i civilizacija; to je razlog bijede u
islamskim drzavama, i razlog zasto je Europa u doba katolicke teokracije
bila u bijedi. Isto tako, neoboriva je cinjenica da je Europskoj
civilizaciji krenulo na dobro upravo razdvajanjem crkve i drzave, odnosno
uvodjenjem religijskog pluralizma. Taj pluralizam je u svacijem interesu;
da, cak i u interesu vecinske religije. Naime, bez pluralizma, vecinska
religija nece usavrsavati svoje pozitivne kvalitete kojima ce uvjeriti
ljude, jer ce joj biti lakse posegnuti za negativnim mjerama represije.
Onaj tko ne mora citavo vrijeme dokazivati svoju vrijednost, zapast ce u
teolosku slijepu ulicu i moralno istrunuti. To je, dakle, kljucni i stvarni
problem s inkvizicijom, i ne samo s njom, jer ona je proslost, nego prije
svega s islamom. Islam je danasnja opasnost, islam je religija koja
pokusava uspostaviti teokratski totalitarizam, i koja se aktivno bori
protiv pluralizma misljenja. Islam je trenutna opasnost koja prijeti
zapadnoj civilizaciji, jer upravo islam u praksi tezi provoditi one
negativne principe, koji predstavljaju problem u slucaju inkvizicije. 

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